A number of video encoding and decoding techniques have been developed for encoding and decoding digital video data. The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), for example, has developed several techniques including MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. Other examples include the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)-T H.263 standard, and the ITU-T H.264 standard and its counterpart, ISO/IEC MPEG-4, Part 10, i.e., Advanced Video Coding (AVC). These video standards support efficient transmission and storage of video data by encoding data in a compressed manner to reduce the amount of data.
A source device may employ one of the above video encoding techniques to encode the digital video data. The source device archives the encoded video data and/or transmits the encoded video data to a destination device via a transmission channel. The destination device receives the encoded video data and decodes the received video data to recover the original digital video data for playback. Video data may be lost or corrupted during transmission over error-prone channels, resulting in decoding errors. Error robustness is important for various applications, such as video broadcasting and video telephony.
A video decoder should detect errors in received bitstreams to support stable video decoding. In addition, a video decoder also should perform error handling to reduce the impact of errors on quality. When a decoding error is detected, a video decoder may conceal corrupted data until decoding synchronization can be reestablished. Without proper error handling, a decoder may drop correct data or display unreliable reconstructed data, each of which can degrade visual quality. However, error handling can be computationally intensive and consume excessive power, particularly when implemented in hardware.